


Butterflies

by dollfaced



Series: The Next Best Thing [2]
Category: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Genre: Coming Out, Kinda?, M/M, Sequel to my other fic, The Recliner™, honestly what am I doing, meeting ur son's weird boyfriend from 1943
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 04:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8564521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollfaced/pseuds/dollfaced
Summary: Jake introduces his parents to Enoch through the best means possible, and it's really not how anybody was picturing their Sunday afternoon.





	

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to godess+bubbles for requesting this (kinda)! sorry it doesn't include the part you actually asked for (i couldnt make it work rip) but i hope this is still good!!
> 
> if you haven't read The Next Best Thing, i would highly recommend reading it before this. this is unbeta'd and i kinda lost the flow of it halfway through but i rlly hope you guys like it :)

That jittery nervousness in your stomach is creeping in again, and it's so, so much worse than it was when it was just you and him. That's natural, and you remember being told when you were young that 'butterflies are great because they mean you're excited', but you're mostly just terrified.

There's an unshakeable feeling that this will be the conversation that makes your parents send you to Psychologist 2: The Hopefully Less Evil Version. _'Mom, Dad, I'm gay. I have a boyfriend. He's one of those people from 1943 that you think Grandpa made up. No, no, I have a video, watch it and you'll definitely believe me because he's clearly never seen a phone before. Please don't seek professional help.'_ And that's _after_ putting nearly two day's worth of thought into it.

 

You've been standing at your bedroom door with your hand on the doorknob for quite some time now, because despite the simplicity of the task, you've been frozen in place. In your other hand you hold your phone. It's not the first time you've wished you could just call him, text, have any way to communicate besides going to Wales seventy-three years into the past, but _god_ you've never wished it this hard. It's tempting to just avoid the whole situation. It'd be so much easier—yet so much worse—to never bring him up. It's tempting, but you remember how he smiled when you told him you were doing this. You remember the shy way he asked if he could meet them too and it would break you to let him down like that.

The door's open and you're walking down the hallway and the butterflies know no mercy. This is a lot for one conversation, but you cannot let it drag out piece by piece.

 

_'Will they not mind that you're a queer?'_

_God, Enoch, I fucking hope not_.

 

You're standing in front of your parents now and your mom has looked up at you. Your father has not. Two days of planning have gone out the window and it's honestly not much of a loss.

"Can I talk to you about something?" You sit in The Recliner, a rare occurrence as The Recliner looks somehow older than anything you've seen in the loop and that concerns you for various reasons.

"Of course sweetie, what's wrong?" Your mom asks worriedly.

"Nothing's wrong necessarily. I've just… got some stuff to tell you and something to show you and it's really important to me that you hear me out with this."

You look at your dad briefly. He's doing that thing people do when they're trying to make it look like they're listening but they're really just watching the TV. Your mom wears an expression of patient concern.

You take a deep breath. "Okay, so… you're gonna meet my boyfriend today. Not like actually here, he can't be here, but I got a video to show you." Your heart's beating like you just ran a marathon—ran at all, really, you're not the most athletic person around. "Wait, first," you take your Grandpa's photo of him out of your pocket and slide it towards them on the coffee table.

"For Christ's sake, Jacob, not this again," you dad says. At least he recognizes the photo, and at least he was madder that you still believe your Grandpa than that you have a boyfriend.

The butterflies are likely going to kill you from the inside of your stomach now, but there's no exit route left for you at this point. You move to sit between them on the couch, video already up, and you press play.

 

_"Introduce yourself."_

_"What is that?"_

_"Right now, it's a video camera."_

 

"No fuckin' way," your dad says, and your mom doesn't chide him.

On the screen, Enoch is confused for a while. You wonder how it could look to someone who isn't hopelessly in love with him. Odd, probably. A lot of odd things seem perfectly normal for you now. If one of his puppets made a guest appearance on this you wouldn’t even notice until your mother and/or father start to freak the fuck out.

 

_"What is this for, Jake?"_

_"My parents. I… I wanted them to meet you, but y’know. They’re in Florida; it would take too long to get there. This is the next best thing."_

 

You don’t want to look at your parents for their reaction, especially not now that you’ve caught yourself hiding a smile behind your sleeve. It’s incomparably easier to keep your on eyes on the screen—on _him_ —and your mind anywhere but in your living room. So, so much easier to do that than to think about how more than half the video has already gone by and it’s going to finish and you’re going to have to deal with the conversation sure to follow.

 

_"Where're you from, Enoch?"_

_"Kilmarnock, Scotland."_

_"I have literally never heard of that before. YOU'RE making stuff up."_

_He looks at you—yes, you and not the camera_ again _—incredulously. "I haven't heard of half of the words you use, but I never accuse you of making them up!"_

 _"Okay, first of all you just did like three minutes ago, and second of all I_ could _be making words up. You can't prove anything either way."_

_He gives you a blank ‘you’re such an idiot why do I love you so much’ kinda look, and it lasts until you start laughing. He falters then, and you were thinking that you should probably stop filming when he asks, hesitantly, if you could do the same thing with your parents for him._

 

The video is off before your parents hear you say yes, because you’re not so sure now, on their part and not yours. It’s quiet for too long, though it’s not really as long as it feels. It’s a horribly unstable balance of anxiety and relief throwing you out of kilter.

“So… I- I’m sorry honey just give me a moment to process things,” your mom lifts what is definitely now a cold cup of tea from the table and drinks it. Her expression does not change as it usually does when she mistakenly drinks cold tea after forgetting both that she’d made tea and that she’d made that tea an hour ago. It’s unnerving.

“Jake, it’s good that you found someone. I’ll be honest, it’s weird that you chose someone from like a century ago, but,” your dad looks again at Enoch’s photo on the table, “you seem happy enough. He’s from that place, isn’t he? What’s his… magical power thingy?”

“Uhh…” you deem it an unsuitable time to say that he has a plethora of real hearts that he puts in dead and inanimate things to control them, and that when you first met him he was using said magical power thingy to stylistically and violently recreate the doll-spider thing from Toy Story. Your mom is still processing the first part. “I’ll tell you later.”

“That’s fine,” she says, smiling faintly, “he seems wonderful, Jake. I think we should make that video now.”

**Author's Note:**

> i honestly have ?? no idea what some of this is tbh most of it was written at like 2am but yes. thank you for reading and comments are very welcome!
> 
> i made a tumblr for my ao3 so if you have any prompts or hcs or you'd like 2 chat please be sure to send me an ask @dollfaced-writes :)


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